Google ads deal puts digital to the fore
Google has signed its biggest cross-media advertising deal with MediaVest, part of Publicis, highlighting the rapid shift of ad budgets to digital media such as YouTube videos, websites and mobile apps. MediaVest, whose clients include Coca-Cola, Honda and Walmart, has committed to spending tens of millions of dollars over the next year to buy advertising on YouTube as well as Google’s web and mobile networks, according to a person familiar with the matter. Google will also help MediaVest measure the effectiveness of ads and create new digital campaigns. The partnership is nonexclusive. "For years, the digital world has been asking for the dollars and laying out a case for why," Brian Terkelsen, chief executive of MediaVest, said. "This is a moment in time where we are beginning to see a new level of transparency, a new level of partnership and a new appreciation of the size of the prize that is available," he added. While consumers are already spending more and more of their time with digital media, advertising spending has lagged behind in this shift. Deals such as this show how marketers are catching up, with potentially negative implications for traditional television – the heavyweight of the advertising business that still attracts $205bn in ad spending annually. Some advertising executives now expect that TV ad spending could plateau after years of growth, since the audience for digital video now has reached sufficient scale that marketers are significantly boosting their ad spending in that area, as well as sorting out new techniques to measure the return on such campaigns. "In many ways, the deal confirms the tremendous momentum that we have on YouTube and the importance of online video to brand marketers," Torrence Boone, Google’s managing director of agency business development said. Mr Boone pointed to a recent campaign from Unilever’s Dove soap brand as an example of how marketers can tap Google’s combination of marketing on YouTube, display ads on the web and mobile as the nexus of their marketing initiatives. With its "Real Beauty Sketches" campaign, Dove hired a forensic artist to draw sketches of women in attempts to convince them of their real beauty. The campaign, which included television, print and other online ads, has attracted more than 160m global views and garnered several industry awards. Laura Desmond, the chief executive of Starcom MediaVest Group, which includes MediaVest, has directed the group to spend more than half of its billings on digital media by 2014. In April, the group struck an advertising deal with Twitter worth hundreds of millions of dollars over several years. Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP , said in recent weeks that his advertising group is expected to spend about $2.5bn with Google this year, about double what it spends with Viacom, CBS and Disney individually.